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Trump exploded at a staffer for telling him the wrong names of his golf partners, John Boehner says in his memoir

Apr 8, 2021, 20:30 IST
Business Insider
Reuters
  • Trump once flew into a disproportionate rage at a staffer's mistake, John Boehner wrote in his memoir.
  • The staffer had told Trump the wrong names of golfers at a game he'd invited himself to, Boehner said.
  • "What are you, some kind of idiot?" Trump yelled, according to the memoir.
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Donald Trump flew into a rage at a GOP staffer for getting his golf partners' names wrong back before he was running for president, former House Speaker John Boehner said in his memoir.

Punchbowl News on Thursday published an excerpt from the book, set to be released on Tuesday.

Boehner wrote that Trump had invited himself along for golf with Boehner and two high-profile executives at a Trump golf course.

Boehner said there was "something dark" about the incident, which took place while he was the House minority leader. That would place the anecdote sometime between 2007 and 2011, while Trump was on "The Apprentice" and long before he ran for office.

"I didn't know Donald Trump at all, except from television," Boehner wrote. "But his name was on the door of the club, and if he wanted to come out with us, none of us were going to say no."

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Trump was friendly, "but in an in-your-face, this-is-how-they-talk-in-New-York kind of a way that I was not used to at all," Boehner wrote. "Direct, loud, intense."

He quoted Trump as saying, "You and I are gonna take these two turkeys on and whip 'em."

Boehner said a staffer, John Criscuolo, had mistakenly introduced the executives as "Joe and Jeff," an error he would pay for later. (Boehner said he changed the executives' names to protect their anonymity.)

"Joe and Jeff" was how Boehner and Trump referred to the two men for the rest of the game - during which, Boehner said, Trump was surprisingly good.

By the end of the game, Boehner said, Trump was in a fine mood - which turned when "Joe and Jeff" awkwardly said those were not their names.

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Boehner shrugged it off and apologized. But he wrote of Trump: "This sort of glower fell across his face. The kind of look I could tell that you didn't want to see too often if you happened to work for him."

He got right in Criscuolo's face, causing the staffer to step back, and yelled, "What are you, some kind of idiot?"

"You want to know how to remember somebody's name?" Boehner recalled Trump saying. "You f---ing LISTEN!"

"I'd never seen anybody treat a staffer like that - not in politics, not ever," Boehner wrote. "This was more than New York bluster. This was real anger, over something very, very small. We had no idea then what that anger would do to our country."

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